Bing Webmaster Tools

Technical SEO, Keyword ResearchFreeNo

As you might expect from Bing, Bing Webmaster Tools is good…but not nearly as good as Google Search Console.

But if Bing is important to you, this tool tells you everything you need to know about your site’s visibility in Bing. Cool Feature: Bing has a surprisingly good keyword research tool (see image below). And it can hand you keywords that the GKP will NEVER reveal.

Browseo

Technical SEOFreeNo

A nifty tool that reveals how a search engines spider sees your site. If you check out the screenshot below you’ll notice that search engine spiders get a very different view of our websites than us humans do.

DeepCrawl

Technical SEOPaidNo

Deep Crawl lives up to its name. It scans every page on your site and gives you a comprehensive report that lists out you how many H1 tags you have on each page, noindexed pages, broken internal links, broken external links etc. Heck, it even tells you if your Twitter Card descriptions are too long.

EasyRedir

Technical SEOPaidNo

EasyRidir makes redirecting traffic between different domains super easy. Just enter the URLs you want to send people from (and to), and the tool gives you DNS info that you can use to manage 100% of the redirects.

Google Analytics

Technical SEOFreeYes

If you’re serious about SEO, you need to use Google Analytics. Enough said.

Cool Feature: Go to “Acquisition” –>”Search Console”–> Landing Pages. This will bring up the pages on your site that get the most impressions and clicks from Google. Look at the CTR field to see your pages that get the best click-through-rate. Finally, apply elements from those title and description tags to pages that get a bad CTR. And watch your organic traffic move on up 🙂

Google Analytics Referrer Spam Killer

Technical SEOFreeNo

When you link your Google Analytics to this free spam killer tool, it will add filters to your account that remove over 100 know spammy referrer websites from your list of referring domains. That way your GA data will be squeaky clean.

Google PageSpeed Insights

Technical SEOFreeNo

You know Google uses your site’s loading speed as a ranking factor.

Well Google PageSpeed insights tells you whether or not Google sees your site as lightning-fast or snail-slow. It also hands you actionable suggestions that you (or your web developer) can use to speed things up.

Google Search Console

Google Search Console is a suite of helpful tools straight from Google. You can see if you have duplicate meta data, how many pages you have indexed, security issues and more.

Cool feature: Go to “Overview”—>”Performance” to get a list of keywords that you currently rank for. Sort by “Position” so that your #1 rankings are at the top. Then scroll down until you find where you rank #10-#25 in Google’s search results. These are pages that you can sometimes push to page 1 with some extra SEO love (for example, pointing a few internal links to that page).

HeadMasterSEO

Technical SEOFreemiumNo

Want to know if your 301 redirects are set up correctly? Or how about canonical URLs? Or maybe you’re not sure if your robots.txt files are blocking Google from indexing your pages. HeadMasterSEO lets you check these potential issues on huge lists of URLs with ease.

Kill Duplicate

Technical SEOPaidNo

Do evil people steal your content? It’s possible for them to outrank you. To proactively prevent this, Kill Duplicate scans the web for content thieves. Cool tool but needs some UX work (confusing UX and some of the copy is in French).

Panguin Tool

Technical SEOFreeYes

Wondering if your site got dinged by Panda, Penguin or another Google penalty? The outstanding Panguin Tool will help you get to the bottom of it. Just link up Panguin with your Google Analytics and the tool will show if your organic traffic dip happened at the same time as a major Google update.

Plugin SEO

Raven Tools

Technical SEO, Content OptimizationPaidNo

A pro-level tools suite designed for digital marketing agencies. Raven Tools probably has the best site auditor tool I’ve ever used. And unlike most site audit tools, Raven shows you EXACTLY what you need to do to fix any SEO issues that your site has.

Rel Nofollow Checkbox

Screaming Frog SEO Log File Analyser

Technical SEOFreemiumNo

Most technical SEO tools scan a list of URLs and tell you about errors and opportunities that it found. What makes the new Screaming Frog SEO Log File Analyser different is that it analyzes your log files. That way you can see how search engine bots from Google and Bing interact with your site (and how often). Helpful if you run a huge site with tens of thousands (or millions) of pages.

Screaming Frog SEO Spider

Technical SEOFreemiumNo

Screaming Frog is the first technical SEO tool that I ever used. And it still holds up today. Great for quickly identifying technical issues that’s holding your site back from the first page. Free version works well. But to get really down-and-dirty, you definitely want to splurge for the full paid version.

Search Analytics for Sheets

Technical SEOFreeYes

Ever wish that you could see Google Search Console data from more than 90 days ago? Well you can’t. That is, unless you use the awesome Search Analytics for Sheets addon. Simple add to Google Sheets, authorize with GSC, and you’re good to go.

SEO & Website Analysis (WooRank)

Technical SEO, Content OptimizationFreeYes

This free Chrome extension gives you important SEO info from within your browser.

Just click a button and the SEO & Website Analysis by WooRank analyzes your page’s basic SEO metrics (like title tags that are too long). But the tool also hooks you up with other helpful info (like whether your site is mobile optimized and how fast it loads).

Yes, you can use this extension for your own site. But in experience this tool is even better for competitor analysis because it shows you the site’s Facebook and Twitter pages, what technology they’re using on their site, and traffic estimates…all from within your browser.

SEO Monitor

Technical SEO, Rank TrackingPaidYes

SEO Monitor is a one-stop dashboard for your SEO performance.

Cool Feature: SEO Monitor takes Google Analytic’s data, mashes it together with your rankings, and helps solve the “(not provided)” issue. This is SUPER helpful for discovering keywords that convert well for you. That way you can put more SEO muscle behind those keywords.

Seobility

Technical SEO, Content OptimizationFreemiumYes

SEObility is a robust (yet user-friendly) site auditor.

Cool Feature: “Page Levels” reveals pages that are deep down in your site’s architecture (in other words, several clicks away from your homepage). Pages that are lots of clicks from your homepage are sometimes hard to get indexed. So this helpful feature can help you find these pages…and bring these pages closer to your homepage.

Site Analyzer

Technical SEO, Content OptimizationPaidNo

Site Analyzer a high-quality site audit tool. Yes, $10 for a 100 page scan is a little steep. But the tool hooks you up with a lot of helpful information, especially when it comes to page optimization.

Site Condor

Technical SEOPaidNo

A VERY in-depth site audit tool. If there’s a potential SEO issue with your site (like a broken link or a title tag that’s too long), Site Condor will identify it. Even I was a bit overwhelmed with the issues it found at first. Fortunately, the tool comes packed with a “View Recommendations” button that tells you how to fix any problems that it finds.

Siteliner

Topvisor

Technical SEOFreemiumNo

Topvisor can be helpful if you’re in charge of technical SEO for several different websites. With a few clicks you can identify issues and opportunites across 10+ different domains. The major downside is that it has a very steep learning curve due to the confusing UI.

Varvy SEO Tool

Technical SEOFreeNo

A clean and easy-to-use site audit tool. You just need to a URL and Varvy spits out a bunch of helpful info in seconds. Specifically, you’ll see your site’s technical SEO issues, social shares, recent Twitter and Facebook mentions, external links and more.

Website Penalty Indicator

Technical SEOFreeYes

Wondering whether or not you got slapped by a Google Penalty? Well Website Penalty Indicator can give you some much-needed insight. The tool lines up your organic traffic with dates of Google penalties…like “Mobilegeddon” and the Phantom update.

Whitespark

Technical SEO, Content Optimization, Link BuildingPaidYes

If you do local SEO for clients, you need to have Whitespark in your arsenal. You can easily find hundreds of NAP citations with a few clicks…and reverse engineer your competitor’s citations with ease.

Cool Feature: Offline Tracking turns “how did you hear about us?” into online data you can use to double down on what works. Integrates with Google Analytics.

ClearScope

Keyword Research, Content OptimizationPaid, NewNo

ClearScope helps you easily create optimized content for today’s Hummingbird and RankBrain-powered Google. Type in your target keyword and ClearScope gives you a list of terms that you should include in your content (and how many times you should use those terms).

FAQfox

Keyword ResearchFreeNo

FAQfox is a question scraper tool. I like how you can choose the websites that FAQfox scrapes. So if there’s a particular site that your target audience hangs out on (for example, Reddit) you can ask the tool to only search that site.

Google Correlate

Keyword ResearchFreeNo

An underrated keyword research tool that comes straight from Google.

Google Correlate is really simple:

It shows you keywords that tend to get searched for together. For example, let’s say you pop “gluten free” into the tool. Google Correlate tells you that people searching for “gluten free” also search for “cheese gluten free” and “flour gluten free”. Very cool.

Gookey

GrepWords

Keyword ResearchPaidNo

A solid, reasonably priced keyword research tool with an excellent question scraper.

Cool Feature: “Divergent” shows you what time of the year certain keywords tend to spike. For example, if you want to see which gift card keywords tend to perk up around Christmas, GrepWords will show it to you. Ditto with Halloween and keywords related to “costumes”.

Imforsmb.com's Bulk Keyword Generator

Keyword ResearchFreeNo

If you do SEO work for local clients (like plumbers and electricians), this tool can help you find local keywords that potential customers search for. For example, if you tell the tool that your client is a plumber in Boston, it will hand you 40-ish keywords that customers might use in Google.

Jaaxy

Keyword Eye

Keyword ResearchFreemiumNo

A unique keyword research tool that shows you keyword suggestions as a word cloud. Bigger keywords=more search volume. It also color codes keywords based on Adwords competition (which is a good sign of a keyword’s profitability).

Keyword Revealer

Keyword ResearchFreemiumNo

Keyword Revealer is a standard keyword research tool with a cool “Keyword Tree” feature. The keyword treee shows you keyword ideas as a tree. And when you click on a “branch” in the tree, a new set of branches appears. Helpful.

Keyword Snatcher

Keyword ResearchPaidNo

This tool probably gives you more keyword ideas than any other tool on the market. Why? Because it finds keywords from a bunch of different places, like Ebay, Amazon and even Yahoo. In fact, the last seed keyword I put into it (“paleo diet”) generated 15,000 keywords!

The one downside to this tool is that it doesn’t show you how many people search for the keywords that it spits out. So you need to manually upload the keyword list into the GKP to get search volume info.

Keyword Tool & Content Assistant

Keyword Research, Content OptimizationFreemium, NewNo

A solid keyword research tool with the features you’d expect. But what makes it unique is the “Content Assistant”. This feature gives you a massive list of LSI keywords that you can use to beef up your content.

Keyword Tool Dominator

Keyworddit

Keyword ResearchFreeYes

One of my favorite new keyword research tools. Why? Because it can bring up terms that you’d be hard-pressed to find with any other tool. Instead of seed keywords, Keyworddit scrapes Reddit for the most common keywords people use in a certain subreddit.

KeywordSpy

Keyword ResearchFreemiumNo

A decent keyword research tool. While Keyword Spy is a bit dated (the copy still says “track your rankings in MSN”), it still works OK. The tool works just like SEMRush: enter a domain name into the tool and it will show you a list of keywords that the site ranks for. However, SEMRush is far and away the superior tool.

KeywordTool.io

Keyword ResearchFreemiumNo

An excellent keyword research tool that scrapes Google Autocomplete results.

Although Google said they would be “restricting” access to Autocomplete, KeywordTool.io seems to have found a way around it. I just tested the tool and it brought back a bunch of excellent keyword suggestions just like it always does.

Kombinator

Keyword ResearchFreeNo

Even though Kombinator is designed for Adwords, it’s also great for finding keywords that you can use for organic SEO campaigns. Just pop in a bunch of different keywords and the tool will mash them all together. Then upload them to the GKP to check their search volume. Helpful.

Long Tail Pro

Keyword ResearchPaidNo

A very easy-to-use keyword research tool. Enter a keyword and get suggestions. Simple and effective.

Cool feature: Only want to see keywords that have a search volume between 1500-2100? How about keywords with an estimated bid of at least $2.50? Long Tail Pro’s filtering feature makes it easy to see ONLY keywords that you actually want.

Power Suggest Pro

Keyword ResearchPaidNo

Power Suggest Pro is a desktop-based keyword research tool. Enter a keyword and it spits out ideas from a number of different search engines (like Google and Wikipedia). Cool Feature: “Ideas!” give you a list of common terms people use in search engines (like “best X” and “how to fix Y”). Helpful for coming up with new keyword ideas.

SanityCheck

Keyword Research, Content OptimizationPaid, NewNo

SanityCheck makes Google Search Console data MUCH more actionable.

Cool Feature: Striking Distance Keywords shows you keywords that are ranking on the 2nd or 3rd page of Google. This can be a pain to find in the GSC, but this feature reveals the same info with a single click. Nice.

SECockpit

Keyword ResearchPaidYes

SECockpit is probably most advanced keyword research tool on the market. Yes, you enter a seed keyword and get suggestions like any other tool. But SECockpit can do so much more than list out a list of related keywords.

It can spit out low competition keywords. It can show you keywords that get a minimum CPC in Adwords. It can even show you keywords that have YouTube, Ebay or Amazon results on the first page.

Cool Feature: SECockpit scrapes the “Searches similar to…” from the bottom of Google’s search results. This can often unearth keywords that you’d otherwise miss.

SEMrush

Technical SEO, Keyword ResearchFreemiumYes

SEMRush is one of the few SEO tools that I couldn’t live without. Unlike most keyword research tools, SEMRush works by showing you your competitor’s top keywords. So rather than grinding away in the Google Keyword Planner, just pop a competitor URL into SEMRush and you’ll see every single keyword that they rank for. #solidgold

Cool Feature: “Pages” reveal the pages on your competitor’s site that generate the most organic search engine traffic. This feature is insanely helpful for executing step #1 of The Skyscraper Technique.

SERPStat

Keyword ResearchFreemiumNo

This tool just had a major overhaul. SerpStat remains an excellent keyword brainstorming tool. It generates lots of keyword ideas like before. But this updated version now provides helpful data like search volume, competition and more.

Cool Feature: “Search Questions” gives you questions that people tend to ask around your topic. Very cool.

Soovle

SpyFu

Keyword ResearchFreemiumYes

I hadn’t used SpyFu in over 3 years. And I was pleasantly surprised to find that the classic PPC tool has been upgraded with a ton of new SEO-focused features. In fact they’re keyword competition feature was one of the best that I came across.

Cool Feature: “Keyword Kombat” uncover keywords that a few of your competitor’s rank for. If those sites have similar authority to you, then it stands to reason that you can leapfrog all of them with some amazing content and link building.

WordTracker

Keyword ResearchPaidNo

WordTracker has its own internal index of keywords. Why is this important? Well it means you can come across long tail keywords that the GKP simply won’t show you. WordTracker also provides organic first page competition data.

Cool Feature: “Search for this Keyword” uncovers long tail variations of a given keyword. Repeat until you’ve found the long tail keyword you want.

Wordtracker Scout

Keyword ResearchFreeNo

Wordtracker scout is a very cool (free) Chrome extension that finds keywords within a piece of content.You simply need to head over to an article, click the “W” button and the tool will scan the page for keyword ideas.

Authority Labs

Rank TrackingPaidYes

A reliable and easy-to-use rank tracking tool. The cheapest plan tracks 250 keywords, which is more than enough for most businesses. And for those of you that do Local SEO, Authority Labs tracks Google+ Local results too.

GeoRanker

Rank TrackingFreemiumNo

GeoRanker is an advanced local SEO (Google Maps) rank tracking tool. As you know, if you track local keywords (like “Boston tacos”), you can’t use most rank tracking tools. You need to see what people in Boston see. Well GeoRanker does exactly that. Choose your keywords and locations and get a report back that shows you your Google organic and Google local results.

Rival IQ

Rank Tracking, Content OptimizationPaidNo

Rival IQ pits your social media and SEO presence against your competitors. It your chief competitor getting more Twitter mentions than you? Are they ranking for a new keyword? This excellent tool will let you know. Had a lot of fun playing around with this one.

SE Ranking

Search Latte

Technical SEO, Rank TrackingFreeNo

Want to see the search results for Google.co.uk, Google.de or any of the other 150+ international Googles? Look no further than Search Latte. Just enter your keyword, pick an international version of Google, and you’ll see that country’s search results. No proxies or VPNs needed.

SERPWoo

Rank TrackingFreemiumNo

A very in-depth rank tracking tool. Show you not only where a page ranks, but how rankings have changed over time. Cool Feature: “Volatility” tells you if a given SERP is stable…or tends to shuffle around.

Sistrix

Keyword Research, Rank Tracking, Backlink analysisPaidNo

Sistrix is an enterprise-level SEO platform that shows you your site’s rankings, social signals, backlinks, anchor text distribution and more. Unlike many SEO tools with a million features, Sistrix is so easy my mom could use it.

Cool Feature: “Keyword Opportunities” show you a list of keywords that your competitors rank for…but you don’t.

Wincher

Rank TrackingFreemiumNo

If you’re on a tight budget, Wincher is the one rank tracking tool that you should add to your arsenal. The free version is pretty nice with weekly updates and 7 tracked keywords. But when you upgrade to the $8/month paid plan you get many of the same features as the big boys (like email alerts) for pennies on the dollar.

Content Optimization tools

BuzzSumo

BuzzSumo went from “new kid on the block” to “must-have tool” in the blink of an eye.

And it’s no wonder. BuzzSumo makes finding winning content (for example, if you want to execute The Skyscraper Technique) a walk in the park.

Cool Feature: “View Sharers” shows you who shared a piece of content on Twitter, which is outreach solid gold bullion. “BuzzSumo Alerts” tells you whenever a keyword or phrase (like a competitor’s brand name) gets mentioned around the web.

Can I Rank

Keyword Research, Content OptimizationFreemiumNo

This tool answers the question we’ve all had when evaluating a keyword: “Can I rank?”. CanIRank.com provides a nice breakdown of how your page compares to the first page competition (inducing domain authority, page authority and on-page SEO metrics).

Keys4Up

Content OptimizationFreeYes

As you know, adding LSI keywords to your content can boost your rankings. The question is: how do you know which LSI keywords to add? Well this free tool does the job for you. And unlike most “keyword suggestion” tools that give you variations of the keyword you put into it, Keys4Up actually understands that meaning behind the word. For example, look at the screenshot to see the related words the tool found around the keyword “paleo diet”.

MarketMuse

Market Muse scans your content and compares it to similar content on the web. If it finds that other people cover topics that you don’t, it tells you about this “content gap”.

For example, let’s say you have a piece of content about low carb dessert recipes. If MarketMuse finds that your competitors use cover topics “Stevia” and “Agave Nector” — but you don’t — it will suggest that you write about these topics in your content.

MetaTags.io

nTopic

Content OptimizationFreemiumNo

nTopic is a “content relevancy” tool. In other words, it scans your content and gives you suggestions to make your post more SEO-friendly. Comes with a WordPress plugin that’s helpful for quickly analyzing and updating your content to boost its on-page SEO.

Positionly

Ryte

Technical SEO, Content OptimizationFreemiumNo

A top-notch technical and on-page SEO tool built with German engineering.

Cool feature: My favorite feature of Ryte is their TD*IDF analysis. TD*IDF identifies keywords that pages ranking for your target keyword tend to use. These terms are excellent LSI keywords that you can sprinkle into your content to bump up your on-page SEO.

SEO Plugin By Squirrly

Ever write a post and wonder: “Is this post SEO friendly enough?”. Then you should give Squirrly a shot. It’s a WordPress plugin that automatically analyzes your content for SEO and human readability.

Cool Feature: Squirrly comes packed with a nice keyword research tool that works within the WordPress editor. In addition to the usual metrics (like search volume), it also shows you if that keyword is a hot topic of conversion online. The tool also shows you the stability of that keyword’s search volume over time.

Text Tools

Content OptimizationPaidNo

Text Tools is an advanced LSI keyword tool. It scans the top 10 results for a given keyword and shows you which terms they tend to use. If you sprinkle these same terms into your content, it can boost your content’s relevancy in the eyes of Google. You can also compare your content to the top 10 to uncover LSI keywords that your content might be missing.

Upcity

This means that instead of getting a list of fancy charts and error messages, the tool tells you how to get on the right track. This is perfect for small business owners that do DIY SEO.

Cool Feature: “Curriculum” walks you through the basic steps you need to have an SEO-friendly website in 2015. Tailored to local businesses and people new to digital marketing. You get checklists and video game-style points for completing the important tasks (like creating a Facebook page or setting up an editorial calendar).

YoRocket

Content OptimizationPaidYes

YoRocket optimizes your title and description tags to boost your organic CTR. I originally developed YoRocket for internal use at Backlinko. And it worked so well that I decided to release it to the public.

Cool Feature: “Title Tag Testing” allows you to test two titles against one another…and use the one that brings you the most traffic.

Backlink analysis tools

Ahrefs

Keyword Research, Backlink analysis, Link BuildingPaidYes

The best link analysis tool on the market…by a mile.

Ahrefs has a massive index (over a trillion links) that’s updated at least once a day. Which makes it ideal for backlink analysis. And compared to most of the other link building tools that I’ve tried, Ahrefs is super duper easy to use. Because of its excellent user interface and index, Ahrefs is one of the few SEO tools that I use every day.

cognitiveSEO

Rank Tracking, Backlink analysisPaidNo

An SEO tools suite that focuses on link analysis. Also has a helpful “Unnatural Link Detection” feature that identifies risky backlinks that might have caused a penalty (or can cause a penalty down the road). Solid tool.

Link Research Tools

Backlink analysis, Link BuildingPaidNo

A solid link analysis tool with some link building features built into it (like link prospecting and outreach).

But LRT’s cool feature is its “Link Detox” tool. This tool automatically scans your backlinks and shows you which links put you at risk of a Google penalty (or links that already caused a penalty). In other words, it makes identifying spammy links super easy. When I ran a test of Link Detox it was almost 100% accurate at differentiating between good and bad links.

Majestic SEO

Backlink analysisFreemiumNo

With a huge, updated index Majestic is one of the top link analysis tools on the market. The tool also has a few helpful propriety metrics like “TrustFlow” and “CitationFLow” that tell you whether or not that site you want to get a link from is authoritative or spammy.

Cool Feature: “Clique Hunter” shows you sites that tend to link to your competitors (but not you). Just pop in a few sites and Majestic shows you the various “cliques” that they belong to. This is a great way to new discover link building opportunities.

Monitor Backlinks

Rank Tracking, Backlink analysis, Link BuildingPaidNo

A comprehensive SEO platform that gives you info on newly acquired backlinks, keyword rankings and site speed. It even sends you alerts whenever one of your competitors gets a new link. I especially love the dashboard because its clean and gives you ONLY the essential info you need.

Cool Feature: Moz’s Keyword Explorer is one of the best keyword research tools on the market. Why? It provides super-helpful info on SERP features that appear in the search results for a given keyword (like the number of Adwords ads, Google News results, and more).

Open Link Profiler

Backlink analysisFreemiumNo

A solid link analysis and reverse engineering tool.

Yes, Open Link Profiler’s index isn’t as massive as the big tools (like Ahrefs and Majestic). But its paid version has some cool features (like on-page analysis and site audits) that can make the monthly payment worthwhile. Also, the free version is the best free backlink analysis tool I’ve ever used. So if you’re balling on a budget and want to see your competitor’s backlinks for free, give OpenLinkProfiler a shot.

Cool Feature: “Hub Finder” is very similar to Majestic’s “Clique Hunter”. Enter a few competitors into the tool and see who links to them (but not you).

SEO Tools for Excel

Technical SEO, Backlink analysisFreemiumYes

The best “SEO tool for excel” that I’ve used so far. Easily check a site’s backlinks (via ahrefs or Majestic API), social shares, HTTP status, word count, external links and more. All from within Excel.

ShareMetric

Keyword Research, Backlink analysisPaidNo

ShareMetric gives you a lightning-fast screenshot of an page’s social shares, links and Google keyword rankings. Especially helpful if you want to see what keyword a page ranks for in seconds. You’ll need an SEMRush or Moz API to get backlink and keyword info. Nice tool.

URL Profiler

Technical SEO, Backlink analysisPaidNo

If you want to check info on a huge list of URLs (like Domain Authority, number of backlinks, whois information, social shares and readability), URL Profiler is the best tool on the market to get the job done.

WebMeUp Backlink Tool

Backlink analysisFreemiumNo

WebMeUp is a quality link analysis tool with a HUGE index of “897,704,758,673” backlinks. I’d love to see the tool use some sort of authority metric (like Ahref’s Domain Rank). Otherwise it’s hard to separate the wheat from the chaff in your link profile.

YTCockpit

Video SEOPaid, NewNo

YTCockpit is one of the few tools out there dedicated exclusively to video keyword research. And it does a nice job. Along with keyword suggestions, you also get a slew of data on the videos ranking on YouTube’s first page (including HD vs. SD, number of subscribers and average views).

Buzzstream

Link BuildingPaidYes

If you do outreach at scale or with a team, you NEED a tool like Buzzstream. Why? Buzzstream makes the messy job of email outreach and link building streamlined and organized. Make sure to check out their new prospecting and email-finding features.

Citation Labs' Broken Link Finder

Link BuildingPaidNo

Instead of hunting for broken links page-by-page, The Broken Link Finder proactively searches the web for them. Just search for a keyword and the tool will scour the internet for broken links…and hand them to you on a silver platter. Then you can hit up the Wayback Machine to see what the content was (and create something similar/better).

Cool feature: You can sort your results by how many people link to the broken link.

disavow.it

Domain Hunter Plus

Link BuildingFreeNo

Domain Hunter Plus is similar to Check My Links. But this tool also checks to see if the broken link’s domain is available for registration. Cool feature in theory…but I rarely find any free domain names with this tool. That’s because authoritative domains tend to get scooped up pretty quickly. Still a helpful tool for broken link building or The Moving Man Method though.

EpicBeat

Link BuildingPaidNo

EpicBeat analyzes successful content in your industry and tells you what tends to work well. For example, the software told me that popular content around the topic of “link building” tended to be video or infographic based. And list posts also tended to do well. Pretty cool.

Free Broken Link Checker

GroupHigh

Link BuildingPaidNo

GroupHigh is advanced blogger outreach software.

Despite the laundry list of features, it’s pretty darn easy to use. Just enter a few keywords to find blogs in your industry. Then filter by Domain Authority and last post date to whittle down the list to bloggers that are worth reaching out to. You can also reach out to them (and track your results) within the platform.

GuestPost Tracker

Link BuildingPaidNo

GuestPost Tracker is a giant database of 1000+ websites that accept guest posts. The tool also allows you to track sites that you’ve submitted to. Their sales copy emphasizes that the sites on their list are not part of a PBN. I took a look at a few of the sites in their database and they looked legit.

HARO (Help a Reporter Out)

Link BuildingFreemiumYes

Want to get backlinks from The New York Times and The Wall Street Journal? You can hire a pricey PR firm…or you can use HARO. HARO is a “dating service” that connects journalists with sources. If you hook a journalist up with a nice quote or stat, they’ll reward you up with a mention or link. Takes a bit of grinding to get a single mention, but the links you get can be solid gold.

JustReachOut

Link BuildingFreemiumYes

Want to get links from news sites like the New York Times and WSJ? The first step is to find the right journalist to reach out to. And JustReachOut makes this process MUCH easier than doing it manually. Just search for a keyword and the tool will generate a list of journalists that cover that topic. You can also pitch journalists from within the platform.

Linkody

Backlink analysis, Link BuildingPaidNo

Linkody lets you know you when you get (or lose) a backlink. It also provides info on your new backlinks (like Mozrank and anchor text). Cool Feature: Linkody emails you when a competitor gets a new backlink. That way you can swoop in and try to get the same one for yourself.

Linkstant

Link BuildingPaidNo

Linkstant you an email alert every time you get a new link. Why is this helpful?

Well you can turn that one link into multiple links (and a relationship) with a quick “hey, thanks for linking to me” email. It also helps you identify reputation management issues quickly so you can nip them in the bud before they blow up.

Marie Haynes' Disavow Blacklist

Link BuildingFreeNo

Wondering if a link is helping or hurting your SEO efforts? Then upload the URL of the page to Marie Haynes’ blacklist tool. It will let you know if the domain is on Marie’s comprehensive list of spammy websites. If it is, you may want to add it to a disavow file. Helpful.

Muck Rack

Link BuildingPaidYes

If you want to get mentions (and backlinks) from sites like The New York Times and Forbes, you need to start rubbing elbows with journalists. And Muck Rack is an impressive PR tool that helps you quickly find journalists that cover your site’s industry.

Cool Feature: The “Journalist Directory” is a hand-curated list of journalists at over 500 media outlets. Includes their latest tweets, columns and up-to-date contact information.

Ontolo

Link BuildingFreemiumNo

If you eat, sleep and breathe link building, then Ontolo is a tool I recommend checking out. It’s designed to do one thing: show you lots of link opportunities. Just enter a few keywords, tell Ontolo what types of links you want to get (for example:”links from guest posts”), and Ontolo will hand you a list of opportunities.

Pitchbox

Link BuildingPaidYes

PitchBox is an all-in-one link prospecting and outreach tool.

Unlike many outreach platforms that are clunky and confusing, PitchBox is a breeze to use. Just enter a few keywords and the tool scans the web for people to promote to (and automatically grabs their contact info). Then reach out to them and track your results.

ScrapeBox

Keyword Research, Backlink analysis, Link BuildingPaidNo

ScrapeBox is the self-proclaimed “Swiss army knife of SEO”. Even though this tool was built for black hat SEO, you can use ScrapeBox for white hat link building tasks (like link prospecting, finding contact information and even keyword research).

Right behind you guys. I just recently signed up for Ninja outreach and it really is a useful tool. Kind of like outreach on steroids. Majestic and ahrefs are a part of my daily life these days. There’s also a subscription service, serped.net which combines a whole bunch of useful tools together eg ahrefs, majestic, and Moz to name a few and the price point is phenomenal

Yup, I’m a fan of those tools as well. I tried to keep the list focused on pure SEO tools. Xenu Link Sleuth helps with SEO, but it’s not designed for SEO. Plus, as you alluded to, there are better tools out there that do the same thing.

That is one very comprehensive list of tools, you can be forgiven for missing some out but I wanted to add (our own) WordTail as an additional tool for rank tracking – new kid on the block, only just launched etc etc.

Once again, pretty awesome list..thanks for that! One thing I seem to be missing though is the SEO Powersuite by LinkAssistant (Website Auditor, SEO Spyglass, Ranktracker). Those are usually our weapons of choice 🙂

sorry if I’m missing something but I can’t get the filter buttons to work at all. I’ve tried in Chrome and IE but if I select a filter, everything disappears and only left with comments. I can however view the entire list if remove all filters.

Another winner here! After taking some baby steps into SEO in the SEO That Works course, I was more boggled by which tools I should have in my toolbox and which ones were worth the cost. Now I have a beautiful Go To resource to plug in the task I need to accomplish and get guidance from the master.

Wow never knew there were so many tools in the marketplace! Although quite new, could you also check out Mondovo.com – it’s an all in one solution that comprises of a bunch of seo and social media tools.

Just one suggestion though – for the option “Show only Brian’s favorite tools”, I thought by selecting “No” it would show *ALL* the options (including your favorites), but this option only shows all the “other” options. So perhaps add another button to “show all”?

Great list of tools and I love how you can sort your list of tools easily. I have been using Ninja Outreach lately and I love the way you can get a list of prospects and manage and promote to those prospects.

Hi Brian, it’s a great list, but I think one of the challenges for small/medium enterprises is allocating dollars. There’s probably at least $10k a month’s worth of subscriptions here. I know you only need one from each category, but even then, it’s at least $500 a month. I would love to know your list of monthly subscriptions for your business. Which ones do you genuinely pay money for? Personally I’m okay with maybe $50 a month for a tool…but I would have to be getting massive value for $300 a month.

Hey Tim, very good points here. I spend well over $500/month on tools because it’s worth it for my business. But every business has different priorities and should pick the tools
that bring the most value for them.

It would be nice if we can upvote comments, such as this one, and then sort the 500+ comments to be a bit more efficient not having to read through absolutely all of them since there are so many. I don’t want to miss the insights and other unique observations from commenters/peers. Nice post Brian and Backlinko team.

I wanted to add, the main purpose of MarketMuse is really our Site Audit tool — we analyze your entire site and suggest topics that are missing from your content. This tool helps you identify what topics resonate best with your target audience, so you create content that your customers find helpful and informative.

The tool you covered (Content Analyzer) is used for content optimization, but it’s really a much smaller aspect of content overall. Content Analyzer measures content quality, and helps you write higher-quality content, but this level of content optimization is really a second step — it’s something you do once you’ve built a cohesive content strategy.

I’d love to give you a 30-minute walkthrough of all of our tools – I’ll follow-up via email.

Oops – just sent you a mail to say I have the same problem as Ty.
The moment I click a filter the list disappears. Tried Chrome and Firefox, and also used an anonymiser (Tunnel Bear) as I am viewing from South Africa

What a fantastic list, loads of work (well done). Think you’ve covered off most if not all. I love Majestic and Whitespark (for local stuff). Brightlocal also worth a mention for Local too. I’ll be looking at others especially any that can get emails (that are real) easily and relatively cheaply. So buzzstream and contentmarketer here i come!
Thanks again Ian

Arian, LOL! Yup, I thought that might help people. Obviously, “Brian’s Favorites” are my personal opinion. And in some cases, one business might be better off with a different tool. But it gives people a place to start.

Thanks Brian – seems like I’ve tinkered with most of these. I know there’s no silver bullet to the entirety of the SEO tool landscape, but I’m curious if others have found any solution that encompasses most of the SEO requirements. I’ve recently purchased SEO PowerSuite (rank tracking, link assist, seo spyglass and website auditor) and have not made up my mind. I guess the fact that I still go to ProRankTracker and Long Tail Pro on a daily basis should tell me that no “one tool to rule them all” really exists (yet).

That is a great monster list Brian! ~ Thank you for publishing that out and sharing it with us.

I like everything about your website except that the reading section is way too narrow. I am aware that it is easier to read if it is a boxed layout but when it comes to a resources page like this one, a small box with a right sidebar may not be the most optimal choice.

The reading section of this page is around 679px. Maybe you can try different layouts for different pages depending on the nature of the page or post. (Easier Reading Vs. Less Scrolling).

Hey Brian,
Just a heads-up. Your link for HARO is missing and your link for Buzzstream is formatted incorrectly so it doesn’t go to their site. There may be other little things, but those are the ones I found.

Holy crow Brian! I’ll just set aside the obvious dumbfounded results about your tool guide, and just say that you show us all how to be amazing. There’s no magic. Just killer hard word and promoting your hard work. You’re the best brother!

Incredible list, Brian.
Quite a few in here I didn’t know about.
Jaaxy is a pretty good little keyword research tool (although I found their customer support to be very lacking).
Another question – maybe for another article – but what do you think about the Yoast premium/paid SEO plugin?
Thanks again for letting me know about the list.
Cheers

Thanks for an *amazing* list of SEO tools. Did you consider adding CanIRank.com? This software calls itself ‘SEO intelligence software’. The interesting thing about CanIRank is that it analyzes a site and gives suggestions on what to change for better SEO. There is a free account option.

Thanks for creating such a magnificent post! You have set the bar VERY high, Brian.

Thats ton of amazing very useful resources that every Internet Marketer, online Business owner loves to get hold off. It needs lot of research, affords and time spend online to gather such an information, and more importantly it requires lot of good heart to Share such an information with others . Hatss off to you and thank you a MILLION for giving away the information .
regards,
Kiran kumar

You rock! Just sent you an email with a tip 🙂 Do me a favor and please write a book – even if it’s the same content in your blog, I’d still buy it for referencing, as your content is the best on SEO / backlinking!

Hi Brian, thanks for all your hard work here. Ahrefs has my attention, I’m taking them for a test drive. I’ve been using WooRank for a little while now. One of it’s developers lives near me in Southern California. Its basic to the point need to know SEO information about your site or a competitor site right from your browser with one click and includes tips on how to fix the issues it reveals. Awesome tool. Thanks again.

Hey Gene, Ahrefs is definitely one of my top 3 SEO tools online. Let me know what you think after you have a chance to try it out. And yup, WooRank is nice
because it gives you the most important info (and tips to fix things).

In addition to SEO Tools I would suggest you one another tool Webbee SEO Spider (https://www.eebew.com/spider/). Along with this single tool you can perform multiple tasks like On-Page audit, Keywords audit, website crawling etc. Hope you will like it too.

Hi Brian,
this is an awesome collection and great gathering of SEO Tools to consider which could suite ones best. Although I donot agree with all your favorites 😉 i found no better collection in the Web with short reviews. Thanx, man. Best, Ralf

Thanks Brian for this content. It really helped me, and now I can use these SEO tools to make my content go viral 🙂
And not only for me but for sure my SEO team will be able to achieve high targets.
Thanks a lot!

It is a cool tool that i am using instead of ahrefs.com because it is free for up to 2 websites and with just 1 free account you can have a list with all the backlinks. It is pretty accurate and easy to use

On the other hand ahrefs is a powerful tool, however it is a lot expensive and the free version has so little features.

Hey Brain!
It’s an awesome list and found that every thing you had shared are very useful and informative.I have one idea backlinko having good visitors and enormous readers why not backlinko will turn to next level.It mean we want to see backlinko as like Forbes.

Hey Brian,
I get to know about your blog from Enstine Muki’s blog and after reading this post I become your fan and bookmarked this site for future assistance. BTW thanks for the list that will make my work easy, I’m going to use these tools.
Thank you so much for your efforts.
Keep sharing.
Have a nice week ahead 🙂

Great list Brian. Pitchbox is the one which i personally like for outreaching prospective bloggers in a particular niche.
For SEO i love usIng SEO Tools for Excel by Niels Bosma .
Thanks for sharing the list. I will look forward to trying and testing each of them.

It’s nothing personal. I love your writing, but I didn’t have the time to read it. I get about 5 to 10 emails from interesting blogs, like yours. If I would read them all, I wouldn’t have much time for creating my own content 😉

It’s a competition in our inbox! You have great headings, so I open them. How do you organize your inbox?

I had to force myself to stop reading. Literally just solidified the x number of tools I’m using.

Thought I would add:

1. Buzzstream just added the open/click-through rates (yesterday).
2. YesWare is a good alternative to Buzzstream. Torn between the two. Personally, I find buzzstream really good for filtering through lists of URLs and YesWare more efficient with their MailMerge function.

Regardless, great post. No idea how you’re not blind after testing this many tools.

Brian,
Fantastic piece with loads of value for every level of seo. I just mentioned you in a new post about creating value to people through lists like this and here you go again delivering above and beyond!

There is a very cool alternative to GTmetrix. Dareboost (https://www.dareboost.com) mesure site’s real loading speed, performance and general quality of your site. Many recommendations are very excplicit.

an article about nothing, thousands of same kind already floats in the net, one more what for? … the most powerful and useful not specified… do you know about seositecheckup.com, webpagetest.org which give real important info? and GA for technical seo? what kind of info about site’s quality you will get from GA?
Fail Brian – it is necessary to rewrite the report! )))

Hello, Brian!
You’ve made a great list of tools. I’ve contacted you ealier about reviwing other great rank tracking tool SE Ranking. I would like to recommend it to include into your list of tools. Let me know.

I’m a huge fan of your content. I’m a danish content marketer, following you and Neil for several years now. Thanks again for another great post.

I would mention Rankscanner.com – I used to use Moz for checking rankings, but it was too comprehensive, and expensive. Back in days I used excel and Free Monitor for Google, however I believe Rankscanner is a good substitute, I’ve 20 domains I’m tracking, and it’s quite good. Just wanna let you know.

Overwhelming list of tools, but GREAT! Thanks for the sort options. I’m not doing much more with Google Analytics and Google Webmaster Tools than looking at traffic numbers. Your tips on how to use them were spot on. Would love an epic post on using both of those tools. I keep searching for how to use Google Analytics and have yet to find anything useful… except your few tips.

Hi Brian, this list is so exhausting to go through it all it is a marathon of an article, i’m sure it was a massive job for you to do it all. Congratulations for it. Thumbs up, this makes my job much easier.

Incredibly comprehensive list. Big respect and thank you. I’ll definitely check a few of them on the weekend when I find more time :).

May I mention a rather new tool that we have built: sem-tool.com? With pride I can say, that it is probably the most comprehensive and versatile suggest scraper available these days. If you want to test drive the pro features, contact me and I’ll hook you up.

I’m developing a collection of technical / content and authority focused SEO tools. And I would like the suggest this specific tool, seoreviewtools.com/website-authority-checker/ for your list.

This tool is designed to give you some quick insights about the authority of a specific page and the domain in general. Based on these metrics: DA, PA, equity backlinks and page / website age. I use the tool to determine the value of a potential link when searching for link building opportunities.

Such a solid list, and so many that you’ve introduced me to. I love the additions of the useful “Cool Feature” additions too.

I actually think some of the best “SEO tools” are not labelled or thought of as SEO tools at all. Things like Mouseflow and Crazyegg where I can better understand how people actually use and interact with a site are super useful in helping me craft a better UX. I can imagine more and more of these types of tools will come under the umbrella of ‘SEO tools’ in 2015/16 as people start to realise that its not just about how technically sound a site is but whether the visitor accomplishes what they set out to do that day 🙂

I’ve blocked the evening in order to go through your post, and see what tools I can add to my arsenal. Already the first entry, AuthoritySpy, is a candidate for inclusion. This will be a long evening and a short night. Thank you for putting this list together.

Last time I was here I had learned something interesting, and guess what! yet another great post. Dude please keep up the good work, it really helps us with a go to place where we can find the latest and greatest of SEO.

Amazing! You have very much solve all my problem.Now I need to see which tools is good for me.Thank you soooo much :).( I had been searching/researching the right tools on Google but tons of result on Google baffle me and mine went bonkers)

Hey Brian, I have been following you since a couple of months now. That’s a cool list of tools and I have used some of them. Can you just post something on how to optimize App in Google Play store. Or some tools for ASO, or may be some techniques for ranking a mobile App in Play store and App Store? I went through Moz and Search Engine Journal but looking from something concrete from your side. Awaiting your response!

Hey Brian,
Love this post. So many good stuffs in here. Personally, I have never used any SEO tools, instead concentrated on natural flow of writing. May be it is because it’s simply a personal blog with blogging guides. But will definitely look out for some free tool to start with.
Keep up the good work.
Cheers,
Joydeep

Thank you a lot Brian! I really missed that kind of posts, and I think that his one came in the right time and with a huge help!
Thank you again for this amazing great work you are doing, and keep going man!

Absolutely astonished at the insights and attention to detail. It’s contributors like you who really set the bar for helpful content that improves web experiences. Excellent deep dive into a complicated topic!

A short review add: I recently signed up to HitTail and was surprised by their engaging and friendly support. Thumps up!
I couldn’t use it though, as my current project isn’t old enough (2 weeks) for significant statistical data.

So if you are not above 1k visitors/month I guess there is little use for HitTail.

Great post Brian! I noticed that you liked both Buzzstream and PitchBox. Do you use both of these tools in your outreach process or one or the other? From what I’ve seen people seem to think of them as Buzzstream vs. PitchBox rather than as complimentary tools. Do you have a different take on this?

I’m so overwhelmed by all this information! I been doing the outreach with pitchbox. I’m a little confused. I have a lot of quality content on my blog and was hoping for the right direction. Is this how it works:

Pick keywords based on my niche
reach out to related niches and ask to guest post on their blog

Do I have to write a new article or can I show them a article on my blog that is already written?

Hey Brian, great list! I can definitely also recommend adding Botify – https://www.botify.com/. Powerful SEO crawler that can be set up to provide automated daily crawls that highlight any new or existing issues. Great support team and very easy to set up.

WOW~ Obviously you have a ton of options based on the products you’ve covered here. What makes this great (besides the sheer numbers of options) is the fact that you can get a search based on various criteria. I’ve been playing with various combinations for the last 2 hours! lol And I have to admit that once I get the kids to bed I’ll be back exploring my options. Thank you, our team needed something like this!